Winter Arrives At Almost Heaven South – Lots Of Photos

After some pretty mild weather the first part of February with six inch tall daffodil leafs, winter storm Octavia finally touched us in the worst way on Monday.  As the storm moved east, it provided snow to its north, rain to its south and freezing rain in the middle – we are in the middle.  In case you are not a Weather Channel watcher, the freezing rain often begins as snow at the cold, high altitude, then changes to rain as it passes through a warm layer and shows up that way here.  Unfortunately, with the outside temperature in the mid 20’s the rain freezes after landing.

This had several impacts for us but most importantly it glazed any untreated roads and made them totally impassable and it stuck to trees and power lines.  I originally didn’t know what caused the problem, but our power went off about 10pm Monday and fortunately we got to use that generator we bought a couple of years ago – it now seems worth the money.

The RV is definitely angry at us for leaving Florida as the rain turned to ice all over it.

Our fine feathered friends kept busy at the feeder even though it developed icicles.  

It looked even worse Wednesday morning and this is the look before I broke off the icicles - only the small birds were getting in.  The birds can hang on the icicles and walk around the icy dome with no problem.

Strong preference for thistle seed at the other feeding station. 

So far we’ve identified the following visitors to the feeders and the ground beneath them: Carolina Chickadee, Tufted Titmouse, Gold Finch, House Finch, several Sparrows, Wren, Cardinal, Nuthatch, Downy Woodpecker, Rufous Sided Towhee, Pine Siskin, and Dove.

I walked around the yard on Tuesday and got a few shots of the ice coated vegetation.

When the roads cleared, we had to make a run to town and got these shots including the one creating our power outage.  The ice laden pine trees were snapped off everywhere, including three across our road, fortunately our neighbor with the big tractor had it cleared in short order.

This one was across the road when we returned.

Fortunately we were set to go after a propane tank refill (for the generator) and 25 gallons of diesel for the RV heater just before the power came on after an 18 hour outage – it was off several days longer for some.  So we just settled it and waited for the snow showers on Wednesday - we got less then an inch but the RV is even angrier.

The sun came out on a very cold Thursday and the trees glistened like they were glass covered and many now had icicles from the sun hitting them.  Unfortunately, I didn’t know how to set my camera up to catch the real beauty of them so I lifted the last shot from my friend Kathy's Facebook post as ours looked just the same.

Even the weeds glistened.

By Friday this very unusual event happened - our cove was frozen over.  Looks like a little trimming will be required to access the dock, but at least no trees laying on it - whew.

Photos can be enlarged by clicking on them.

Have a great day and thanks for stopping by Almost Heaven South.

Larry

2/16 - 2/20/15 event dates